From Murulla, the range we had crossed extends eastward, enclosing the valley in which we were encamped, and which gives birth to the river Page.  Our way now lay westward, towards the head of this valley, in order to cross by the usual route, the higher and principal range, which still lay to the north.  We traversed, this day, six miles of the valley, and encamped beside a remarkable rock, near to which the track turned northward.  I rode a little beyond our bivouac, and chanced to fall in with a tribe of natives from Pewen Bewen on Dart Brook, one of whom afterwards visited our camp, but he could tell us little about the interior country.  The whole of the valley appears to consist of good land, and the adjacent mountains afford excellent sheep pasture.  In the evening, a native of Liverpool plains came to our tents; I gave him a tobacco-pipe, and he promised to show me the best road across them.  Thermometer at sunset 84 degrees.

Cross Liverpool range.

December 5.

This morning we ascended Liverpool range, which divides the colony from the unexplored country.  Having heard much of this difficult pass, we proceeded cautiously, by attaching thirteen bullocks to each cart, and ascending with one at a time.  The pass is a low neck, named by the natives Hecknaduey, but we left the beaten track (which was so very steep that it was usual to unload carts in order to pass) and took a new route, which afforded an easier ascent.  All had got up safely, and were proceeding along a level portion, on the opposite side of the range, when the axle of one of the carts broke, and it became necessary to leave it, and place the load on the spare packhorses, and such of the bullocks, taken out of the shafts, as had been broken in to carry packsaddles.

A sick tribe.

We reached at length, a watercourse called Currungai, and encamped upon its bank, beside the natives from Dart Brook, who had crossed the range before us, apparently to join some of their tribe, who lay at this place extremely ill, being affected with a virulent kind of smallpox.  We found the helpless creatures, stretched on their backs, beside the water, under the shade of the wattle or mimosa trees, to avoid the intense heat of the sun.  We gave them from our stock some medicine; and the wretched sufferers seemed to place the utmost confidence in its efficacy.  I had often indeed occasion to observe, that however obtuse in some things, the aborigines seemed to entertain a sort of superstitious belief, in the virtues of all kinds of physic.  I found that this distressed tribe were also strangers in the land, to which they had resorted.  Their meekness, as aliens, and their utter ignorance of the country they were in, were very unusual in natives, and excited our sympathy, especially when their demeanour was contrasted with the prouder bearing and intelligence of the native of the plains, who had undertaken to be my guide.